Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation of children

Parents Forum
201

I’ll post this again:

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-03-17/features/sfe-sfp-college-tougher_1_universities-admissions-students

Unless I don’t understand what I am reading, that looks kind of bleak to me. As I said, this isn’t a trend I’ve followed, just what turned up with a quick google.

…

One reason (among many) I homeschooled until HS was an intense dislike of homework. If I had to supervise homework after school hours with my very young kids, I felt I might as well just supervise some schoolwork for a couple of hours a day at our convenience and accomplish the same educational goals. I found this much less stressful all round. But we were fortunate to be in a situation where I had that option.

Unlike QM I never took my own HS homework assignments seriously and only did them if they were interesting. Of course, I was far from an A student. I think homework should pretty much be optional in HS. I don’t think it should be a significant part of the grade. I would be okay if homework grades were used to raise an end of term grade rather than lower it. Although I am a helicopter mom, I never, ever supervised or asked about homework when my kids went to HS. If they asked for help, I did my best. I did however, fuss at the school about teachers and busy work assignments (after my kids brought them to my attention) and changed a lot of what was going on while my kids were there. When parents like me opt out of the school system, it does have an impact. Whether my impact was positive or negative would depend who you spoke with at that time.

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I’m going to get a little analytical here so bear with me. There is an article in Harvard Business Review a while back that talked about managers falling into four different categories based on their energy and focus. I think this analysis can apply equally to students:

  1. High energy and high focus = “purposeful”
  2. High energy and low focus = “distracted”
  3. Low energy and high focus = “disengaged” (unable to commit to tasks that have low meaning for them)
  4. Low energy and low focus = “procrastinators” (unable to commit to tasks whether meaningful or not)

In the workforce only 10% of managers fit into the “purposeful” category. And it seems those are the types of students that the top universities (actually all universities) want on their campuses. (Stanford, for example, refers to it as students who demonstrate “passion”.)

I think when we intervene or assist our children, we need to ask why we are doing so, particularly at the high school level:

  • Is our child acting in a purposeful way and we are simply providing support for that? A ride to a rehearsal or paying for a private lesson with regard to a favored activity would both seem supportive.
  • Or are we trying to fill the gap between a student who currently fits into categories 2-4 and our dream category 1 student? Continually reducing chores so a procrastinator can finish his homework, adding private lessons because the student is disengaged and won't practice enough at home, or enrolling a distracted student in repeated SAT prep courses, would all seem problematic to me.

If we find ourselves regularly trying the fill the gap we are not doing anyone any favors. It’s much like “enablers” of addicts, which are defined as people who “remove the natural consequences to the addict of his or her behavior.” Enablers of addicts may act out of love and the belief that their actions are necessary, but they do more harm than good.

The same applies with our students. I think that’s what the book is getting to when it says don’t always rush to school with your kid’s lunch when he forgets it. Rather, encourage him to figure out how to solve the problem he has placed himself in.

As to the topic at hand, it is extremely difficult for colleges to determine whether a given applicant is truly purposeful (recommendations are helpful, but provide limited context). It seems colleges focus mostly on end results to determine purposefulness - students who do well in ALL their classes and are ALSO able to have some high level commitment/achievement outside of the class are MOST LIKELY purposeful. But, as the former dean’s book contends, there are also students who do well in all their classes and have some high level of achievement outside of class only due to the extreme and excessive intervention of their parent(s).

Those students have never learned to act purposefully because they have relied too much on their parent(s) as a crutch. Being such a crutch and helping our students gain admission to top universities in that way is not only unhealthy for both us and our children, but arguably unethical (to the extent it takes away opportunities from other students who may be truly purposeful).

There is also the problem of students who reach a high level of achievement by sleeping only a few hours a night. But I see that as a different issue. There, the child may be unilaterally trying to close the gap (perhaps because his parents expect him to be a category 1 student when he is not) and has chosen an unhealthy way to try to do so.

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It is not Texas either. Texas A&M auto admits any in state student in the top 10% of the graduating class, or any student in the top 25% of the graduating class with an ACT of 30 or a SAT CR+M of 1300. University of Houston will auto admit anyone in the top 25% who achieves a 21 ACT, UNT (University of North Texas) will auto admit anyone in the top 25% with a 20 on the ACT.

204

One problem I see with your analysis is that we are talking about 14-18 year olds and, with any luck, their personalities aren’t completely fixed. One of my brothers had to spend more time than I want to think about supervising the homework of one of his daughters. Because of his efforts she was able to be admitted to a college where she could study just what she wanted and did very well, and now has a job in her field.

She wasn’t purposeful about her HS studies because she wasn’t interested in them. She was extremely high energy and high focus on her EC and that has become her career.

205

@blossom One Data Point:

D’16 State Flagship (Denied)
SAT CR 550-670
SAT M 590 - 710
SAT W 550-680
ACT 25 - 31
GPA: 3.42 - 3.78

D’16 OOS Flagship (Accepted)
SAT CR 580-670
SAT M 600-690
SAT W 570-670
ACT 26 - 31
GPA 3.75 and above

D’16 was not auto admit top but in top 16%. Not admitted to State Flagship, but admitted to OSS Flagship that has slightly higher Stats. It happens…

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^Which state?

I believe UVA, U Michigan, U Berkeley and UCLA, possibly SUNY Binghamton if you live downstate.

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UH and UNT are not considered flagships so perhaps it depends on your definition of flagship. Agree with you on A&M but not everyone will.

@labegg Your daughter has not applied to UT, I thought? UT does not technically deny Texas residents, but instead offers them alternate pathways to admission including the CAP program. Many view this as a denial, though.

208

Understood that UNT and UH are not flag ships, but @blossom asked about directionals as well. My experience from living in Texas is that there are A&M people and UT people. I am not sure what makes a “flagship” in such a scenario. UT has a much better general academic rep, but A&M is now bigger.

If the point is that it is hard to get into Berkeley or UT, UM or UVa, then yeah, those are among the handful of generally revered state schools in the country. One would expect admission to be difficult, and I would not consider those schools as “normal” state flagships for admissions purposes.

209

SocalPapa: I am enjoying your posts. Canuckguy is another poster who is looking at what businesses want and then trying to figure out the best way to educate our kids based on that. I don’t want to be critical of either of you but this is not how our family thinks about education. What business wants does not matter to me one bit. It is completely beside the point. This is easy for me to say. Business wants my kids anyway.

^^I like this quite a bit. There is not a level playing field. For instance, we can’t level the field between children who grow up in households with books and those who don’t.

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Just saying that things in Texas are very weird for those kids that want the flagship and are floating in the top 10% to 20%. I guess I would call Texas a 2 flagship state A&M and UTA. I do think an alternate pathway admissions is a “denial”, lol. The moment she was accepted to the OOS Flagship she dropped her apps to UH, UNT and TxTech. It doesn’t really matter to my D’16 she really wanted to be OOS and no Texas school has her intended major. Overall graduation rates for UH, UNT and TexasTech are not stellar so the OOS Flagship seems the best option for D’16 overall. But, if it happened to her, I am sure there are others that it is happening to as well.

One of her good friends (also in the same gray area of class rank) moved to Minnesota in June (end of junior year) so that he would be considered OOS and increase the chance of acceptance at UTA. It wasn’t the entire reason that the family moved. They definitely had considered staying until he finished his senior year but weighing the pros and cons decided to make the move sooner rather than later. Am waiting to see if that strategy works out for him.

211

Back when QMP was a pre-schooler, there was some newspaper coverage of a dad in Half Moon Bay who complained to the school board that his daughter had too much homework in middle school. It was interfering with family activities. (Does that count as helicoptering?) He said that she was a top student. My thinking at the time was that if she had to spend that much time on the homework, she was not naturally a top student, and should push less. This was based on my own experiences in school. Little did I know about some current school philosophies! I suppose the homework overload at our local school was karmic-payback, in a form.

212

Homeschooling is a great option, if workable. It requires a good personality match between parent and child, which is not guaranteed, and most likely a lot of patience on the part of the parent, as well as a lot of time. It was not a real option for us.

David Deutsch, who is an eminent physicist/philosopher in Oxford, has been an advocate of “unschooling.” This is somewhat similar to homeschooling–not quite sure of the differences, and it would depend on how one homeschools, I’m sure.

213

Unschooling, done well, is the exact opposite of the Tiger Mom philosophy but accomplishes the same basic goal. Yet with a HAPPY, purposeful, high-energy, high-focus, self-starter as the end result, assuming parents adjust their expectations to the child’s interests as well as talents.

Sometimes I act like homeschooling was a big deal on my part, but it was one of the most enjoyable times of my life. I not only got to do exactly what I liked with my kids, but I could also use it as an excuse to decline doing all sorts of things I didn’t enjoy doing. It was the best excuse ever.

adding: regarding the Half Moon Bay tale, before I had kids I was extremely critical of all those parents who just wouldn’t insist their young children be quiet and go to sleep. Then I got non-sleepers. I am still sleep deprived.

214

Please post the stats of the in-state residents getting rejected at U Central Florida. I’m not impressed with the fact that the Florida state schools are rapidly ratcheting up the average GPA’s (for a variety of reasons, most notably the fact that lots of people moan about rampant grade inflation but poor academic rigor at the public HS’s in Florida). I want to see the evidence that high stat kids can’t get into their own state colleges- flagship, directional, and other in states other than Texas, California and Virginia.

Average GPA doesn’t mean anything if the high score kids who are “merely” B+ students are also getting in to Florida or Ohio or Wisconsin state colleges. So the idea that the AP/EC arms race which starts with Stamford and Harvard is now trickling down to the state schools in Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma- which was the contention earlier in the thread-- again, not buying it. I am ready, willing and able to concede that a kid who is burning out by sophomore year of college and needs to ratchet down the intensity is likely giving up the opportunity to attend the mega-intensity school. But I’m not sure it’s good parenting to insist that this kid stay up all night doing homework, take a full boatload of EC’s, etc. out of fear that a solid student with great academics (but not mega academics) is forfeiting the affordable option, i.e. local state college. Again- what state is this?

And I don’t think it’s quite fair to describe Binghamton as the NY flagship. Folks on LI think it’s Stonybrook. Some believe it’s Albany or Buffalo. And which strong students (again, defined as high stats but low on EC’s) is getting rejected from Stonybrook these days- regardless of where in NY they live???

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Excellent points @alh. I didn’t mean to imply students are stuck in one category or another - only that if it the parents are trying to artificially close the gap there is less likely to be any immediate improvement in purposefulness.

Your example is a good one though because it highlights the difficulty of being high energy and high focus for all of your subjects in high school. Further, your story is exactly the result I think most people would hope for with their kids. Your niece not only found her passion but is earning money in that field. What could be better?

But I think there is a difference between helping your child to do well enough to get into a school that offers the major or type of activities your child is interested in (as per your example) and what I’m talking about - creating a “perfect” resume in the hopes of getting our kids into a top college.

Just about all of the people I knew to be truly purposeful in high school have done very well for themselves (both in college and thereafter). That’s why colleges want these students. They are almost guaranteed to make the college look good in the long run (and make generous donations).

Conversely, lack of success is in no way certain just because someone was not purposeful as an 18 year old. My purposeful HS friends represent only a small percentage of the successful/purposeful people I know. In fact, the vast majority of the top people in my profession would readily admit that they were not purposeful in high school or even college (some did not become purposeful until they entered our profession).

So, in short, the purposeful people being admitted to HYPS were probably going to be high achievers anyway and any non-purposeful students who follow other paths will have an opportunity to be successful nonetheless.

The moral of the story? Don’t kill our kids trying to shoehorn them into the guise of a perfectly purposeful 18-year old HYPS candidate.

216

I think several of us on this thread would argue the purpose of education should never be about creating a perfect college candidate or perfect job candidate.

When students come around in the spring, writing distressed posts that all their hard work has been for nothing, that is a really unfortunate educational outcome. imho. The work should have some intrinsic value to the student. imho.

Even homework.

217

Here’s some info about UCF: https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-university-search/university-of-central-florida It’s interesting, in that the GPAs seem (to me) disproportionately high when compared to the standardized test scores. And yet, only 70% graduate within six years. What does this mean?

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“And I don’t think it’s quite fair to describe Binghamton as the NY flagship. Folks on LI think it’s Stonybrook. Some believe it’s Albany or Buffalo. And which strong students (again, defined as high stats but low on EC’s) is getting rejected from Stonybrook these days- regardless of where in NY they live???”

Yes Binghamton is far from a flagship and bares no resemblance to the well known and well respected flagships in other states. I’m not saying it does not attract strong students. I’m saying the experience it provides bares no resemblance to that of the well known and well respected flagships of other states. It is probably much like the other state schools in the states that have flagships. For that reason, many of the strongest NY students given a choice choose OOS flagships. Binghamton is cheaper. That is what it has going for it. It is often even cheaper for OOS than the flagships of their own states. NY residents apparently enjoy subsidizing the education of students from other states.

Many people on this site suggest that Binghamton is equal to that of the flagships of other states. The test is if a student would opt for Binghamton over those other schools if they were priced the same. Would the choice be Binghamton over Michigan (or the next 20 flagships) if the price were the same? I’d say rarely and only if they want to stay close to home or attend school with their high school buddies (essentially Binghamton is then offering them grades 14-17). For those wanting the best university experience, the flagships are the better choice (if price were held equal).

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It could mean that it is relatively easy to have a high GPA in HS (and when we all bemoan every May the number of schools with 16 Vals and 25 Sals this seems to be obvious) but not to have the intrinsic analytical skills to do well in college. Or it means that UCF for whatever reason has been ratcheting up the GPA’s of their accepted students without regard for whether or not the kids are otherwise qualified.

Or it could mean something else.

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I don’t have a link, but I do not believe this is unique to UCF. I do know that when the grade scale in my school district was changed 6 years ago the weighting for AP class es went from 0.7 to 1.0. Honors were also weighted for the first time. Of course the weighted GPA’s shot up.